The High Nelly bike wheels turn full circle

Marty Mannering is restoring old memories as well as old bikes with his company, he tells Richard Fitzpatrick

PEOPLE looked funny at Marty Mannering when he founded a bike restore company 12 years ago. It was the height of the Celtic Tiger boom. People were more interested in open-top cars than careering around the countryside on a rickety old High Nelly.

“I wanted to do something that nobody else was doing, and bicycles in Ireland were looked down on,” he says. “It was the opposite way to the rest of Europe where you were considered intelligent. The attitude there was ‘fair play to you for getting a bike because it makes sense’ whereas in Ireland it was ‘you must be having a bit of a problem if you’re riding a bike and can’t afford a car’. I knew that given time that philosophy would change.”